Here’s one to make ahead, and use in a variety of recipes as a quick, easy, and robust flavoring ingredient. Commercial sun-dried tomatoes packed in olive oil are often expensive, vary in quality, and don’t contribute enough flavor, but this one works well.

My son has been bragging about this one so much so that I was once obliged to cook up several dozen barbecued-chicken drumsticks for his class picnic. No problem: Any chance to be a hero to your kid is an opportunity not to be missed. Actually, it’s not my recipe. It’s from "Cooking of the South," by Nathalie Dupree, who has done so much to